As United States Secretary of Energy, Dr. Ernest Moniz is tasked with implementing critical Department of Energy missions in support of President Obama’s goals of growing the economy, enhancing security and protecting the environment. This encompasses advancing the President’s all-of-the-above energy strategy, maintaining the nuclear deterrent and reducing the nuclear danger, promoting American leadership in science and clean energy technology innovation, cleaning up the legacy of the cold war, and strengthening management and performance.
Prior to his appointment, Dr. Moniz was the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was a faculty member since 1973. At MIT, he headed the Department of Physics and the Bates Linear Accelerator Center. Most recently, Dr. Moniz served as the founding Director of the MIT Energy Initiative and as Director of the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment where he was a leader of multidisciplinary technology and policy studies on the future of nuclear power, coal, nuclear fuel cycles, natural gas and solar energy in a low-carbon world.
Challenges and Opportunities for Energy Today
What we have to do right now is make the investments in building and re-building the energy infrastructure that will be appropriate for the next decades ahead. That will include building infrastructure that is resilient against a whole variety of risks, but it also involves opportunity…
Energy’s Close Link with Transportation and Environment
When we say energy infrastructure, as we address it in this Quadrennial Energy Review, we are addressing an infrastructure that goes well beyond wires and pipes for energy. Much of it does involve transportation infrastructures, for example, because they also are critical for moving energy commodities.
Now Is the Time To Get Infrastructure Right
We really need to meet the challenge now of beginning robust investment in our energy infrastructure and in the shared infrastructures like rail and waterways that are critical to moving all kinds of commodities in the United States, including energy.
If Congress Leads, the Public Will Follow
…I’m actually rather encouraged in the reaction to this Quadrennial Energy Review in the sense that we see the energy committees of both chambers, first of all having hearings, but secondly having the leadership of those committees come out very publicly in, roughly speaking, endorsing many of the recommendations of the QER…
Download full transcript (PDF): Dr. Ernest Moniz on The Infra Blog
